Dell: OptiPlex 360 - OptiPlex 790 Hard Drive Compatibly

DLoThaKrooked

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Apr 23, 2017
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Dell: OptiPlex 360 - OptiPlex 790 Hard Drive Compatibly

I was wondering if it was possible to use the hard drive from an OptiPlex 360 in an OptiPlex 790, and the hard drive from an OptiPlex 790 in an OptiPlex 360? I had an old 360 and needed more RAM to run audio engineering and video editing software so I upgraded to a OptiPlex 790. I was really hoping I could switch out the hard drives between each other to avoid having to transfer a year and a half worth of work and also avoid downloading 4 days worth of programs as well. If anyone could help this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance for any insight and advice.
 
Solution
Sure you can swap the HDDs over, you just can't run the existing Windows installation that's on them when you've swapped them over because the two motherboards aren't the same so all the existing installed device drivers will be the wrong ones - - there's no chance that Windows will run or even start under those conditions.


They both use 3.5-inch HDD's so they can be swapped. You'd have to clone the drive to the other one. Also I'd back up any data, hard drives don't last forever, once they die you'll lose all your precious data.
 
Sure you can swap the HDDs over, you just can't run the existing Windows installation that's on them when you've swapped them over because the two motherboards aren't the same so all the existing installed device drivers will be the wrong ones - - there's no chance that Windows will run or even start under those conditions.
 
Solution
Depending on your intentions for the old Optiplex 360 I would consider just installing the Optiplex 360 HDD, which has the software and files on it, and transfer them over to the Optiplex 790 HDD first.

Depending on software, they may or may not transfer over and require installing on the new HDD.